Authors: Richard Johnson
Minutes later
Charlie gasped for air as he stopped in front of his parents’ isolated house.
Crickets chirped loudly in the overgrown bean fields as he searched for anything
out of the ordinary. From the outside the place looked exactly as he remembered
it, and Charlie hoped against hope for a simple explanation. Maybe his father
traded the shotgun, or maybe he sold it?
He walked
down the gravel driveway towards the front door and absentmindedly looked into
his sister’s station wagon that was parked there. Big mistake.
Charlie’s
sister, Melody, was nowhere to be seen. But her son, a precocious two-year-old
named Cody who often claimed his boogers were cookie crumbs, was still strapped
into his car seat. At least, the lower half of him was. The rest had been
ripped away and digested long ago.
The sight was
too much, and Charlie violently puked before crying out in anguish. Then he
wiped his mouth and stormed inside the house before the others could stop him.
Not surprisingly, what he found within was just as bad.
They say you
can never go home, and during a zombie apocalypse, this is more often true than
not. The house had been ransacked and the back screen door banged open and shut
with the breeze. It appeared wildlife had moved in some time ago. And the smell
was about as bad as expected. Sour. Wet. Dead.
However, the
dilapidated state of the home wasn’t what bothered Charlie now. His mother was
on the living room floor where her decomposing body was slowly melting into the
shagged carpet. Melody was several feet away and in the same condition, but
with a gunshot through her head and pants around her ankles. Charlie did not
even want to think about whatever chain of events had led to such a scene.
And then, as
he looked up, he came face to face with his father. Or, more aptly, what used
to be his father. The infected man had come up from the basement as Charlie
wept loudly, and was now heading right for him.
Without
hesitating, Charlie swung his dad’s shotgun overhead like a club and brought
the man low. He slammed the butt down again and again until his father’s face
resembled a spilled bowl of tomato soup. It was an inglorious end for such a
kind soul, and that made it all the more horrible.
The others
ran inside, and Charlie, covered in his own father’s blood and gore, turned to
Katya with a cold glare. “How come nobody was looking out for them too?”
There was
absolutely nothing Katya could say at that moment, so she grabbed Sam and
quietly slipped out the back door. As unhinged as he was – and rightfully so –
she wasn’t sure what Charlie was about to do. But she did know that Sam
shouldn’t see it.
Muttering to
himself, Charlie dragged the bodies into a pile, albeit gently, and closed
their eyes while staring intently at each family member. He tried to focus on
happy family memories, as if that could somehow alleviate the pain. However,
nothing could block out the reality of the hellhole in front of him.
Having been
raised by the Campbells due to his own dysfunctional family, Rob was almost as
upset as Charlie. The big man would have collapsed into a blubbering pile of
despair had Ping and Smokey not supported him. Even so, each trembling sob
threatened to bring all three down to the ground.
Charlie
grabbed a knit blanket from the couch and walked outside, quickly coming back
with his nephew’s desiccated remains. He gently placed the blanket on his
sister’s lap and then went to his own childhood bedroom, returning moments
later with a handful of cardboard boxes. It was his baseball card collection,
the ultimate symbol of youth and innocence. Those days were gone for good. For
everyone.
The
distraught son, brother, and uncle began piling the cards on top of his family
in a bizarre funeral pyre. He threw unopened packs of Donruss into the mix,
loose cards he never got around to sorting, and then his 1987 Tops complete
set, the one with the brown borders. It was from the last year he collected the
cards before they became uncool. Next came a stack of rookie cards for his
favorite players including Bo Jackson, Ozzie Smith, and of course, Nolan Ryan.
For some reason Charlie gripped the card tightly as he pictured the time the
old pitcher beat the crap out of Robin Ventura for charging the mound.
He took the
lighter from Smokey and torched the card, letting the flames lick his hand
before dropping it into the pile.
*
*
*
The group
left the house after it became fully engulfed in flames and marched silently
through the forest towards their final destination. Charlie’s optimism from
earlier in the morning had been replaced by utter and abject despondency. If
bad news greeted him at the base, he was likely to end it all right there.
The loss of
Charlie’s family had been a heavy blow, but with mere miles separating them
from the alleged base, their plans moving forward needed to be addressed. Still
smarting from his dressing down the day before, Left-Nut took it upon himself
to broach the subject all the same.
“I know it
sucks, Charlie. But we should look ahead here. It’s painful, I get it, but—”
“Don’t
pretend you know what I’m going through,” Charlie said without slowing down.
Left-Nut
moved in front of him. “Look at me. Look at them. All our families are dead
too. We just didn’t have to see it.”
“Mine’s not,”
Vlad said.
“Shut the
fuck up,” Left-Nut shot back, using the phrase on someone else for once. “Far
be it from me to be the voice of reason, but if there’s one thing I’m good at,
it’s self-preservation. And I’m telling you, we need to get it together and
fast. I mean, do we think they’re just gonna let us waltz right into this
military base? Do we think they’ll like us showing up with one of the
enemy
?”
“Ping is one
of us,” Sam said.
“They don’t
know that,” Left-Nut replied. “Hell, they might shoot us on sight just for
fraternizing with him.”
“So what are
you saying?” Charlie asked.
Left-Nut
lowered his voice. “I’m saying we need to think this through and try to put a
more diplomatic spin on things here. Our meeting with the Johnson boys didn’t
go too swell now did it? Just like our run-in with Crazy Pat, though I’ll take
the blame for that one.”
“They killed
my family.”
“Possibly,
but we didn’t know it at the time Vlad cut them up like Thanksgiving leftovers.
I’m just saying, you’re obviously pissed right now, and deservedly so. How
about we let cooler heads prevail when we get there? I’d say Smokey does the
talking.”
For once, the
long-haired stoner nodded in agreement with Left-Nut. “He’s a bastard, but he’s
right on this. As of now, I’m in charge. Ping will just stay back a ways until
we defuse the situation.” He looked at Vlad. “And no bullshit out of you.”
“What? I am
like stray kitty cat.”
There was a
collective eye roll and they took off again, at least with some semblance of a
plan this time. As they worked their way through the trees, nobody knew what
lay ahead, but they all understood things were about to change for better or
worse.
Thirty
minutes later the guessing game was over. “Guys, we’re here,” Rob said and
waved them up to his position on the edge of the forest.
The sight
that greeted them was not what they had expected. Instead of an actual military
base, the fort was a massive shipping facility surrounded by vast walls of
sandbags. Heavy machine guns were visible on the roof and only one road led to
the main gate, with a charter bus parked in front of it. In an ominous sign,
the surrounding field was littered with hundreds, if not thousands, of rotting
corpses and random body parts.
“Zombies?”
Rob said.
“Maybe,”
Left-Nut answered. “Or maybe they were assholes like us sneaking up to a secret
military base.”
“Guess we’ll
find out,” Smokey said and took his wife-beater undershirt off, attaching it to
a nearby stick. “Don’t worry, I’ve seen shit like this a million times on
television. The important thing is to stay confident and speak in a direct but
nonthreatening manner. I’ll go straight up to the side wall and work my way over
to the main entrance.”
Without
further ado, Smokey started the hundred-yard walk across the field of death,
stopping every so often to wave his white flag to avoid being mistaken for a
cannibal. Only a chorus of crows, angry at the interruption of their feast,
greeted his arrival.
Soon he had
reached the wall, but something wasn’t right. For starters, he should have been
spotted by the sentries well in advance. Upon closer inspection, it became
apparent why he hadn’t been. The watchmen were skeletons.
Smokey set
the stick down and waved at his friends.
“It’s a ghost
town, come on over!”
Big mistake.
Dozens of zombies came streaming out from behind the back side of the fort with
extreme prejudice. Smokey had been lulled into a false sense of security by the
deaths of the countless zombies around him, and he would now likely pay for it.
The others
were too far away to do anything but watch in horror as the pack descended upon
their friend. Smokey looked at his stick, threw it on the ground and fumbled
for the last joint tucked away in his underwear. The killers got within fifty
yards as he pulled the joint out and prepared to light it.
Boom!
Boom! Boom boom boom!
Smokey
dropped his Grateful Dead lighter as the zombies detonated by the handful,
having run straight into a minefield. He had somehow managed to walk through it
unscathed, but the cannibals were not as fortunate, and Bouncing Betty
fragmentation devices were blowing them up like moist fireworks.
The rest of
the group hugged the edge of the forest and made their way towards the road.
They reached it safely while the zombies continued to explode in the field.
Eventually,
the last of the runners, an elderly woman, hobbled towards Smokey with great
effort but minimal speed. She detonated into nothingness several yards from her
target, showering Smokey in dentures and old lady parts, but leaving him
otherwise unharmed.
As the smoke
cleared, a semi pulled down the lone road and stopped in front of the group,
causing them to clench their weapons in anticipation of whatever clusterfuck
was next.
The passenger
door opened, and after a few painful seconds of waiting, a heavily bandaged man
limped around to the front, carrying a clipboard.
“Can I get
somebody to sign for this delivery of two thousand dildos?” Trent said.
Laughing
heartily, Smokey pointed his thumb at Left-Nut. “No man, we’ve got plenty of
dildos already.”
As Trent’s
group exited the vehicle, Left-Nut shook his head in amazement at Smokey. “I’d
say you’re luckier than Justin Bieber’s dick right now.”
“Hey, I did
win the lottery, remember?” Smokey said with a grin and stepped forward to grab
his lighter.
Click.
He looked down just as the landmine shot up from the ground.
“Bummer,”
Smokey said while the explosion of shrapnel and death enveloped him. His fabled
luck had run out.
*
*
*
Trent’s happy
reunion had been short-lived due to Smokey’s sudden demise. But life, and the
struggle to maintain it, had to go on. After a brief burial of the parts of Smokey’s
body that had been blown into the safety of the road, the merged group climbed
on top of the semi and made their way inside the looming base.
As expected,
it was completely abandoned. The place also appeared to have been evacuated in
a hurry as plenty of supplies and weaponry seemed to have been left behind.
This was little comfort for anyone at this point, but it was better than
nothing.
Marquell and
Jackie took a group and set about gathering those resources while Charlie,
Left-Nut and Rob searched for clues about the evacuation.
After two
hours of searching, they still had nothing. Charlie was about to give up when
Sam came to them holding a piece of paper.
“This might
be something. I found it on a bulletin board by the kitchen. You said you were
looking for a child, right?” Sam handed over a crudely drawn picture.
“Wow, great
work,” Left-Nut said sarcastically. “Let’s put it up on the fridge.”
But Charlie
smiled broadly. “That’s Brandon’s. I’d recognize his shitty drawings anywhere.”
The picture showed a small black child up in a tree surrounded by what looked
like bucktoothed vampires. Also in the picture was a man in a red outfit who
looked like a bald superhero, his arms reaching upwards. It was Charlie.
“Why’s he
wearing a football helmet?” Rob asked.
“Huh? That is
strange,” Charlie said and looked closer. Indeed, the Brandon in the drawing
was wearing a Denver Broncos football helmet, and the helmet had been drawn
much better than the rest of the picture, possibly by an adult’s hand. “I think
it’s a clue. Maybe they weren’t allowed to leave us a message, but they did
anyways.”
“And?” Trent
said.
“And we’re
going to Denver. Might even be able to catch them along the way. We should
hurry up.”
Left-Nut
exhaled deeply. “We barely made it halfway across the state and now you want to
try and cross half the country in some sort of
Lord of the Rings
-type
caper?”
“Yes,”
Charlie said flatly.
“All based on
a fucking hunch? And for argument’s sake, what if we find the base and
everyone’s dead?” He was interrupted as a giggling Vladimir walked by like a
kid in a candy store, draped in ammo belts and carrying a .50 caliber Browning
machine gun. Left-Nut ignored him. “Or what if your girlfriend’s moved on from
your pathetic, pining ass? I’ve seen enough Maury Povich to know that just
because you’re baby’s daddy doesn’t mean you get the keys to the castle. She
could be knocking combat boots with half the National Guard by now. Fuck, she
might not even be pregnant. I mean, how well do you actually know her? It
wouldn’t be the first time you got suckered by a chick.”